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Based on theories from the technological innovation literature, this study develops an integrated model of information systems (IS) adoption in small businesses. The model specifies contextual variables such as decision-maker characteristics, IS characteristics, organizational characteristics, and environmental characteristics as primary determinants of IS adoption in small businesses. A questionnaire survey was conducted in 166 small businesses. Data analysis shows that small businesses with certain CEO characteristics (innovativeness and level of IS knowledge), innovation characteristics (relative advantage, compatibility, and complexity of IS), and organizational characteristics (business size and level of employees' IS knowledge) are more likely to adopt IS. While CEO and innovation characteristics are important determinants of the decision to adopt, they do not affect the extent of IS adoption. The extent of IS adoption is mainly determined by organizational characteristics. Finally, the environmental characteristic of competition has no direct effect on small business adoption of IS.

In this series of blogs I want to concentrate on the smaller, newer businesses that are paving the way for new systems, business models and ways of meeting customer and consumer needs. They’re challenging the old-school models, the ones wrapped up in years of investment (and success) that incumbents are beginning to re-think but are loathe to get rid of.

It’s a perfect time to take a look at what it means to own a home, to make a home, to rent a home. This is an opportunity to take the best from the old ways of doing things, and from the new, and to define “home” in a way that doesn’t place unsustainable burdens on resources, both natural and fiscal. Some of the solution lies in adjusting our expectations about what a household looks like and how much space we really need. Some of it lies in recognizing that, in a world where our energy use is destroying the climate, we have to change the way we put our houses together.

When people bought houses and intended to stay, they made a commitment to the community. They made lasting connections with people and businesses. Once a house became something that you owned just long enough for the big cashout, those connections were lost.

Small is beautiful

Public Banking

challenge

Getting To Scale: Growing Your Business Without Selling Out Book by Jill Bamburg Ben & Jerry's. Stonyfield Farm. The Body Shop. Tom's of Maine. All leaders in the socially responsible business movement--and all eventually sold to mega-corporations. Do values-driven businesses have to choose between staying small, selling off, or selling out

Well-run businesses require a hierarchy of highly paid executives. Worker co-ops are efficient and democratic, and workers keep the profits. The freedom to do ecological damage improves the business climate. If we destroy the environment, there is no business … or climate. Large corporations are efficient, innovative, and create jobs. Locally rooted small- and medium-sized businesses create the jobs and innovations we need.

Restraining corporate power requires changing the way we think about business. This means changing who owns, controls, and benefits from it. Profits, for instance, can flow to workers, consumers, or the community—not just to outside investors

The range is vast: from small worker- and community-owned firms to state pension funds, many of which are flexing their ownership muscle to force changes in corporate policy and target investment to meet public needs. What follows are seven of the best current models.

 value networks, a new way to produce and to distribute value. This section focuses on the second one. We are taking an iterative approach to solve the value accounting problem and to design and implement a sound value system, which allows individuals and small organizations to collaboratively create and distribute value. The main role of the value accounting system is to track different types of contributions, like personal, social, built and natural capital, and to compute a revenue share for all contributors, based on individual contribution. But in order to make value networks self-organize into creative and productive entities we need more than a sound value system. We are in fact developing the entire infrastructure of value networks, which includes communication, coordination and collaboration tools, a reputation system, a role system, an incentive system, a feedback system, a service system, a materials management system, a project/tasks management system, etc. All these components interact with each other and form a humane and empowering environment, in which contributing member can express their passions, exchange and collaborate to create value. We are not just dreaming about this. SENSORICA, which is sustaining a continuous growth in value and in potential since its inception, is a living proof of our model. 

For decades our understanding of economic production has been that individuals order their productive activities in one of two ways: either as employees in firms, following the directions of managers, or as individuals in markets, following price signals. This dichotomy was first identified in the early work of Nobel laureate Ronald Coase, and was developed most explicitly in the work of neo-institutional economist Oliver Williamson. In the past three or four years, public attention has focused on a fifteen-year-old social-economic phenomenon in the software development world. This phenomenon, called free software or open source software, involves thousands or even tens of thousands of programmers contributing to large and small scale project, where the central organizing principle is that the software remains free of most constraints on copying and use common to proprietary materials. No one "owns" the software in the traditional sense of being able to command how it is used or developed, or to control its disposition. The result is the emergence of a vibrant, innovative and productive collaboration, whose participants are not organized in firms and do not choose their projects in response to price signals.

much broader social-economic phenomenon. I suggest that we are seeing is the broad and deep emergence of a new, third mode of production in the digitally networked environment. I call this mode "commons-based peer-production," to distinguish it from the property- and contract-based models of firms and markets. Its central characteristic is that groups of individuals successfully collaborate on large-scale projects following a diverse cluster of motivational drives and social signals, rather than either market prices or managerial commands.

this mode has systematic advantages over markets and managerial hierarchies when the object of production is information or culture, and where the capital investment necessary for production-computers and communications capabilities-is widely distributed instead of concentrated. In particular, this mode of production is better than firms and markets for two reasons. First, it is better at identifying and assigning human capital to information and cultural production processes. In this regard, peer-production has an advantage in what I call "information opportunity cost." That is, it loses less information about who the best person for a given job might be than do either of the other two organizational modes. Second, there are substantial increasing returns to allow very larger clusters of potential contributors to interact with very large clusters of information resources in search of new projects and collaboration enterprises. Removing property and contract as the organizing principles of collaboration substantially reduces transaction costs involved in allowing these large clusters of potential contributors to review and select which resources to work on, for which projects, and with which collaborators. This results in allocation gains, that increase more than proportionately with the increase in the number of individuals and resources that are part of the system. The article concludes with an overview of how these models use a variety of technological and social strategies to overcome the collective action problems usually solved in managerial and market-based systems by property and contract.

Slow Food means living a deep, meaningful life

beginning at the table

interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our daily food choices affect the rest of the world.

The Institute for Participatory design, we draw on a large Methodenrepertoir, to get some ideas for the design of our design process. Because we believe that each project and each method requires its own context, we offer classic methods reference and inspiration. My methods are constantly being developed and fully adapted to new requirements. In the end it is always important that your individual requirements are higher than the pure doctrine. We present here a small selection of our repertoire: Citizen activation and Community Organizing Civic Forum Citizen-based design workshop Design-oriented mediation Open Space Palodium Planning Workshop Round Table World Café